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Photo Gallery: Neptune

Neptune

Photograph courtesy NASA

Neptune's Great Dark Spot is clearly visible in this image of the small planet, taken in 1989 from Voyager 2. The Great Dark Spot was a rotating storm system similar in size to Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Winds near the spot were measured up to 1,500 miles an hour (2,400 kilometers an hour)—the strongest recorded on any planet. When the Hubble Space Telescope viewed Neptune in 1994, the storm system had vanished and another dark spot had cropped up in the planet's northern hemisphere.

Neptune Clouds

Photograph courtesy NASA/JPL

Bands of clouds streak across Neptune in this image snapped by Voyager 2. The planet's blue color comes from methane in the atmosphere and another component that's a mystery to astronomers.

Neptune and Triton

Photograph courtesy NASA

Neptune's largest moon, Triton, hovers beneath the planet in this image taken by Voyager 2 in 1989. Triton is the only large moon in the solar system that has a retrograde orbit, meaning it circles its planet in a direction opposite to the planet's rotation.

Neptune Storms

Photograph courtesy NASA

Several storms are at work in Neptune's windy atmosphere in this Voyager 2 image taken in August 1989. The largest is the Great Red Spot. Beneath it is the bright white feature that Voyager scientists nicknamed "Scooter." Another storm, Dark Spot 2, roils at the bottom of this image. Each storm moved eastward at a different velocity.

Triton

Photograph courtesy NASA

The largest of Neptune's 13 moons, Triton is one of only three objects in the solar system known to have a nitrogen-dominated atmosphere. (The others are Earth and the Saturn moon Titan.) It's also one of the coldest objects in the solar system—its icy surface reflects so much of what little sunlight reaches it that its temperature is only about -400 degrees Fahrenheit (-240 degrees Celsius). It's so cold that most of its nitrogen condenses as frost, making it the only moon known to have a surface made mainly of nitrogen ice.

Neptune on Triton's Horizon

Photograph courtesy NASA/JPL

The bright blue marble of Neptune glows across the horizon of its scarred and pockmarked largest moon, Triton, in this composite image. The foreground is a computer-generated view of Triton's maria—large, flat areas—as they would appear from a point approximately 28 miles (45 kilometers) above the surface.